A Private Branch Exchange (PBX) is a telephone exchange that makes connections among the internal telephones of an organization, such as a private business or telephone network. The PBX allows these internal telephones to connect to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) via trunk lines and/or the Internet. A hosted PBX system delivers PBX functionality as a service via the PSTN and/or the Internet. A telephone company typically provides hosted PBXs using equipment located on the premises of the telephone company's exchange. A hosted PBX system means the customer organization does not need to buy or install PBX equipment and this gives the customer organization more flexibility because the telephone company can use the same switching equipment to service multiple PBX hosting accounts. Furthermore, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) gateways can be combined with traditional PBX functionality enabling businesses and organizations to use their managed Internet/Intranet to help reduce long distance expenses and to enjoy the benefits of a single network for voice and data, which gives greater cost savings, mobility and increased redundancy.
For users that rely on a VoIP PBX system for their organization's primary communications system, reliability of the system to complete phone calls is a major concern; of particular concern is what will happen if the system becomes overloaded or the system goes down. This concern may be further exacerbated if the organization relies on a hosted VoIP PBX wherein the PBX service is accessed over the Internet and shared with many other organizations, and therefore the service may be subject to greater possibility of overload or interruption due to Internet service outages.
The requirements of a hosted VoIP PBX have created the need for a new kind of outage bypass solution. Pre-existing systems fail to protect users against failure and overload of the VoIP PBX and/or the Internet service used to connect the VoIP PBX to the users' calling devices. Without such an outage bypass solution, if the VoIP PBX has a failure or if there are network or other problems with the connection to a user's SIP devices (telephone terminal), then users are no longer able to make or receives calls, and callers receive no notification about what sort of problem exists. Pre-existing systems may have provided some level of unidirectional bypass or override, but heretofore no system has existed that provides incoming unidirectional bypass with outage protection for both VoIP PBX overload or failure and also Internet service failure or interruption combined with a configurable problem notification capability.
The present invention meets one or more of the above-referenced needs as described herein in greater detail.